DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 



BOWDOIN COLLEGE, 



SEPTEMBER 5, 1850. 



BY WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. 



-*-V> 



s ALBANY : 

CHARLES VAN BENTHUYSEN, PRINTER. 



1850. 



/ 




^^ } CSkrJ~ 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 



BOWDOIN COLLEGE, 



SEPTEMBER 5, 1850. 



BY WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. 




S ALBANY : 

CHARLES VAN BENTHCJTSEN, PRINTER. 
1850. 



V 



DISCOURSE. 



There are some occasions which almost necessarily 
cast out from one's mind all thoughts of being a 
stranger, even when his eye is meeting faces which 
it never met before. When the friends of learning 
come together to celebrate her past triumphs or 
consult for her future advancement ; especially 
when such an association as this, which she 
acknowledges as one of her most revered and effi- 
cient helpers, assembles to keep an annual jubilee 
to her honour ; there is little reason why the matter 
of a cordial sympathy between the speaker and his 
audience, should turn upon so unimportant a ques- 
tion as whether they have ever had a previous 
meeting. I confess, Gentlemen, that, in attempt- 
ing to comply with your request, it costs me little 
effort to feel at home in the new circle in which 
your partiality has placed me ; for I greet you as 

* The greater part of this discourse was delivered at the late anniversary of 
the Phi Beta Kappa society of Dartmouth college. 



fellow labourers in the cause of intellectual improve- 
ment, and I remember that the republic of letters 
knows no geography. I feel honoured in finding 
myself, as I do for the first time, surrounded with 
the sons of Bowdoin; and I am glad to breathe, 
though it be but for a few hours, the atmosphere in 
which so many fine intellectual constitutions have 
been reared ; but the more grateful reflection to me 
is, that though we hail from different colleges, we 
are devoted to a common cause ; and that the sons 
of Harvard, or of Yale, or of any other of our higher 
seminaries, may afford to join you in this festival, 
without even thinking of their individual literary 
maternity. 

Notwithstanding it is the idea of good fellowship 
and grateful remembrances, rather than of anything 
formal or elaborate, that seems most congenial with 
the spirit of the occasion, I could not feel that I was 
true to either your expectations or my duty, if I 
were to throw away this hour upon any indifferent 
or profitless speculations. What I wish is, to give 
to your minds such a direction as may serve to 
quicken your sense of responsibility as scholars, and 
to stimulate you to more vigorous efforts for the 
well being of the race ; and I know not that I can 
accomplish this object better than by bringing before 
you a few thoughts on the perpetuity of intel- 
lectual INFLUENCE. 



There is a sense indeed in which it may be said 
that all influence is immortal. We are too much 
accustomed, in our estimate of both objects and 
events, to regard them in an insulated, rather than 
a connected, view : reason condemns this as an 
illusion incident to the imperfection of our faculties. 
Whatever God has made or ordained, belongs to a 
mighty system, from which nothing can be spared, 
but at the expense of the perfection of the whole. 
And as this system has been constituted with a 
view to important ends, so all its parts are put in 
requisition for their accomplishment. The dew 
drop of the morning and the lily of the valley have 
a purpose to answer, as truly as the wide ocean or the 
majestic oak. The man of the hovel has a part to 
act, as truly as the man of the palace. And though 
the influence of the one may seem to be as nothing, 
while the influence of the other presses upon you 
every where, yet they are alike in this, — that they 
are both component parts of God's universal min- 
istry ; they both belong to a system of perpetual 
and boundless co-operation. 

I hardly need say that it is in a more specific 
sense than this, that I design now to speak of the 
perpetuity of intellectual influence. I refer more 
particularly to those minds that nature, or culture, 
or both, have exalted above the mass ; and yet I 
will include not merely men of such towering intel- 



lectual stature as to constitute them the lights of 
their age, and afterwards the lights of history, but 
all whose faculties have been trained to vigorous 
exercise, and directed, in general, to useful ends. 
My position is, that men of this description, living 
in whatever country or age they may, never cease 
to live. They have an important and enduring 
agency, in moulding the character and destiny of 
the race. Whether their influence works a new 
channel for itself through successive generations, or 
whether it mingles more directly in the mighty 
stream which is forever growing from the contribu- 
tions of ages, you can no more question its perpe- 
tuity, than you can doubt the axioms of science, or 
reject the testimony of the senses. 

Intellectual influence in the high sense here con- 
templated, perpetuates itself primarily, in a direct 
study of the great works which it has originated 
and accomplished, and which remain an hereditary 
and permanent legacy to the world. A great mind 
imparts to its offspring, not merely a general in- 
tellectual hue, but a marked individuality of features 
and expression. No matter whether it be through 
the pen, or the pencil, or some other medium, that 
such a mind puts forth its efforts, in those efforts it 
enshrines itself for immortality; and henceforth it 
lives in a form in which it can be referred to and 
communed with by men of every clime and every 



generation; lives to teach wisdom, to quicken 
thought, to mould character, on earth, while its 
immediate sphere of activity is amidst the scenes 
heyond the vail. 

AVho helieves, for instance, that the author of the 
Iliad had done teaching the art of poetry, when the 
rude generation that first heard his poetry sung, had 
passed away ? Centuries after, the great Virgil sat 
at his feet, and invoked his muse, and followed, 
(hand passibus (zquis it must he acknowledged,) in his 
glorious track. And from Virgil down to "Wordsworth, 
it would perhaps be difficult to find a great poet, 
who had not either directly or indirectly, held 
communion with the Grecian bard. Nor is it merely 
in forming poets of illustrious name, that the in- 
fluence of Homer has been felt ; but genius in every 
form has acknowledged the power of his sublime 
creations. The painter has felt it, working up his 
pictures into the bold and bright realities of nature ; 
the sculptor has felt it, causing the cold marble to 
take on every thing that pertains to life, but its actual 
pulsations ; the architect has felt it in the new forms 
of beauty and magnificence which it has supplied 
to his imagination; every scholar has felt it, at least 
in his admiration of the power of genius and in 
fresh impulses towards intellectual eminence. I 
take for granted that Homer, in some form, is an 
inmate of this venerable seat of learning ; and I 



doubt not that many who hear me, would respond 
heartily to all that I could say of the privilege of 
walking in the light of his genius. 

But Greece gave to the world its greatest orator 
as well as its greatest poet; and it is no less true of 
the thunder of the former, than of the melody of 
the latter, that it has never yet died away. It must 
be acknowledged that, in order fully to appreciate 
the power of a great orator, we must hear the voice 
and see the face of the living man ; we must sur- 
render ourselves to the magic glances of the eye, to 
the mysterious dominion of gesture and attitude ; 
and such, in some cases, has been the power of mere 
manner, as to invest the most indifferent common 
places with the character of lofty wisdom. If what 
has come down to us in respect to the manner of 
Demosthenes is to be relied on, there must have 
been in it an assemblage of qualities, which could 
never be adequately conceived, without being wit- 
nessed and felt. In this respect, the generation that 
listened to him had certainly the advantage of the 
generations that have succeeded; though history 
has preserved enough, to render him a universal 
teacher. But for the power and splendour of his 
conceptions and his language, we are not obliged 
to trust history; for in spite of the barbarism of 
intervening ages, a large portion of his productions 
have been prpservcd. And in them we realize so 



vividly the fervid and lofty kindlings of his spirit, his 
alternate calmness and vehemence, his power to 
rouse and agitate, to assuage and subdue, that in 
our estimate of the orator, we almost forget that the 
face and the voice could have imparted any ad- 
ditional attraction. Now I maintain that, though 
death took him out of the scenes in which he had 
been accustomed to mingle, so that he was no longer 
the terror of his adversaries or the hope of his 
country, it still left him in the world ; — left him to 
speak to all nations and all ages, in those matchless 
productions that can never die. The orations against 
Philip evidently gave a hue, in an after age, to the 
orations against Catiline ; and it may well be doubted 
whether there ever would have been a Chatham, or 
a John Adams, or a Chalmers, if there had not been 
a Demosthenes to go before; — for whatever those 
great minds might have been, independently of the 
Grecian orator, it can hardly be questioned that he 
acted as a powerful auxiliary to the culture of each. 
Who will not say that he has mastered the grave, 
who, after the lapse of nearly half the whole period 
of the world's existence, still occupies the throne in 
the department of eloquence; is still revered and 
cherished as a model in all the schools; and is 
continually reproducing, in a degree, the same 
sentiments of hope and fear, of sympathy and 
aversion, of admiration and scorn, which alternately 



10 

swayed the multitudes who listened to the living" 
orator ? 

If another illustration is needed, let it he from 
the department of the fine arts; and a better 
example we cannot find than Michael Angelo ; for 
the painter and the sculptor, to say nothing of the 
poet or the architect, were combined in him, in 
perhaps nearly equal degrees of eminence. The 
splendid period which he adorned, scarcely furnished 
another genius equally bold and lofty and versatile. 
Some of his statues have been pronounced not 
inferior to the finest specimens of the Greek school ; 
and many of the productions of his pencil would 
not suffer in a comparison with any of the master 
pieces of antiquity. In the statues of Cupid and 
Bacchus, of Moses and the Christ, in the monu- 
ments of the Medici and the representation of the 
Saviour's descent from the cross, the powers of 
sculpture seem to have been well nigh exhausted. 
In the sister art, perhaps the brightest monument 
of his genius is his picture of the last judgment, 
executed in the style and spirit of his favourite poet 
Dante; — a picture that groups, with terrible and 
glorious effect, most of the material circumstances 
of the final catastrophe of the universe. I say 
nothing here of what this wonderful achievement 
of the pencil has effected, or is hereafter to effect, 
in reviving or perpetuating a taste for the fine arts ; 



11 

I only say that, so long as this picture lasts, it will 
be a medium through which the mind of the 
immortal artist will act with mighty moral power 
upon a multitude of other minds; and even those 
who have not an eye to detect its minuter beauties, 
find it easy to comprehend, and difficult to resist, 
the grand and solemn lessons which it inculcates. 
Michael Angelo flourished in the very dawn of the 
Reformation ; and it were to be expected that such 
a subject should be invested in his mind with 
somewhat of the superstition of his age ; but yet 
the picture brings out a much truer theology, and 
in an infinitely more effective manner, than is to 
be found in the perplexed and bewildering specula- 
tions of most of his contemporaries. I should not 
think it beneath a protestant of the nineteenth 
century, to study this picture, not merely for the 
genius which it evinces, but for the truth which it 
displays ; for though it be truth which Christianity 
has cast into the light of noonday, and which 
Protestant Christianity has separated from the errors 
with which it was once associated, it often becomes 
more impressive, even to a cultivated mind, when 
it thus makes its appeal through the medium of 
the senses. 

But it is not always that the efforts of great 
minds are embodied in a literally visible and 
palpable form. It is possible that they may be so 



12 

subtle as hardly to come within the range of the 
senses, or so secret as not to fall within the domain 
of history ; and yet they may penetrate to the very 
heart of the world, and reach onward to the end of 
time. Or even, though they may be palpable 
enough to the generation to which they immediately 
belong, yet, as they derive their power, in a great 
degree, from combination, and from the peculiar 
existing relations of things, they necessarily lose 
their distinctive character with posterity ; and 
though their influence is forever at work in moulding 
the destiny of society, it were not more hopeless to 
attempt to gather out of the ocean the drops that 
have fallen in a single shower, than to designate 
the innumerable and multiform channels through 
which this influence diffuses itself. Hence there 
are many great and permanent benefactors of the 
race, whose names scarcely survive the generation 
that immediately succeeds them. Perhaps they 
put forth no single independent effort of so marked 
a character that any distinct record is made of it; 
and yet they are vigorous and efficient co-workers 
with others, in bringing about momentous results : 
they have an enduring life in those institutions 
which they have contributed to establish or improve. 
It has happened, not unfrequently, that those 
measures which have left the deepest impress upon 
society, have originated in the wisdom of one, 



13 

and been brought forward and urged by the elo- 
quence of another ; and though, in such a case, 
the latter is usually the person to receive the laurels, 
the former is the one who really holds his race 
under the heaviest obligation. It has fallen to the 
lot of here and there an individual, to do good 
service to the world in both the ways of which I 
have spoken — I mean, by great efforts which are 
perpetuated in their original form, and by that more 
general influence of which history often finds it 
difficult to take cognizance, except in its results. 
The great German Reformer performed mighty 
works with his pen; and those works made a power- 
ful impression on the darkness of his age; and they 
have been out on a mission of light and love ever 
since ; and both God and man will see that that 
mission is never suffered to terminate. But we 
have here only a part of Luther's achievements. 
He was certainly in some respects, the master spirit 
of his time. His great heart never took the first 
lesson in fear ; his giant intellect was always awake ; 
his eagle eye always upon the stretch ; his well 
nigh resistless hand ever nerved for action ; and 
possessing such qualities, and maintaining such 
attitudes, we easily see that we have not reached 
the source of his highest influence till we have 
come up to his unwritten thoughts ; to words that 
fell upon the ear but have never met the eye; to 



14 

deeds of noble daring, of which it is left to history 
alone to speak. Cherish his written productions 
with as much reverence as you will, but study the 
history of his life, and you shall find greater works 
than these ; and even history will reveal to you but 
very imperfectly what it was that made him the 
wonder of his age. Suppose Luther's great influence 
had never been put forth, or had not survived his 
own generation, who knows that even we, in these 
ends of the earth, should have been breathing the 
genial atmosphere of civil and religious freedom ? 

I have spoken of the influence which great minds 
exert by those embalmed efforts, in which they be- 
come teachers, perhaps models, for all posterity. 
But our view of this subject would be incomplete, 
if it were not to include also some reference to those 
obscure hints and apparently insignificant sugges- 
tions, which, possibly, at the time, pass without much 
notice, but are afterwards found to have contained 
the seminal principle of some great discovery. It 
sometimes happens indeed that the same individual 
seems to originate and mature, if not absolutely 
perfect. Some accidental observation of the opera- 
tions of nature, suggests a grand conception, which, 
when carried out, revolutionizes the world. It 
occurred to Columbus that it was natural to suppose 
that the Eastern continent should be balanced by a 
Western ; and this thought brought in its train the 



15 

discovery of America. Newton's doctrine of colours, 
the prismatic spectrum, was the result of his observ- 
ing the colours in a soap bubble. The idea of the 
London tunnel is said to have been first suggested 
by the operations of some insect, in protruding a 
kind of sheath, as it bored its way through the sand. 
But it is quite possible that the seed of a great in- 
vention may lie,, in some measure, dormant in the 
mind of several generations, before it begins to 
germinate. Some remote hint of it may be sug- 
gested, sufficient to keep the mind of the world in 
a wakeful and expecting attitude : and there may 
be some visible approximation to it, as the years 
and generations pass away : or possibly, after a long 
period of suspense and inquiry, the whole distance 
between absolute ignorance and complete know- 
ledge, may be passed over in an hour. The origin 
of the steam engine is referred to the Marquis of 
"Worcester, in the time of Charles the First ; but the 
rude thing which he constructed, had to come down 
through the hands of Savary and "Watt and Fitch 
and Fulton, before it could be made available to 
bringing the poles together. The conception of the 
Electric Telegraph dates back into the last century: 
there were men in different countries eagerly look- 
ing out for it: and it finally came in its present 
form, as the result of other philosophical discov- 
eries, which had been coming in upon the world 



16 

through a series of years. There have been in- 
stances also, as in the discovery of Galvanism, in 
which a new field of truth has suddenly opened 
upon a mind which has not been in search of it, — 
possibly, which has been in search of something 
scarcely analogous to it. Now, in all these cases, — 
whether the discovery be a matter of design and 
inquiry, or a matter of pure accident, — whether 
there has been a manifest preparation for it, as 
gradual as the dawn of morning, or whether it has 
come unbidden and unlooked for, as the lightning's 
flash, it is invariably the result of influences that 
have been previously at work. I venerate the 
names of Newton and Franklin, of Fulton and 
Morse ; and I am more than willing to concede to 
them the honour due to illustrious discoverers ; but, 
after all, each of them entered, in a degree at least, 
into other men's labours; or, if the discovery were 
acknowledged to be entirely original, yet the gen- 
eral light of the age in which it was made, was 
nothing less than the accumulated influence of 
preceding centuries. 

It is an interesting thought in this connection, 
that the achievements of the great intellects of one 
generation, are not only bequeathed as a legacy to 
the next, but actually become capital for the next to 
employ in enlarging still more the stock of intelli- 
gence and virtue. When Fulton died, it was a 



1? 

great matter that he left an insignificant steamboat 
or two, plying doggedly on the Hudson, at the rate 
of five or six miles an hour; it was a glorious 
triumph, in connection with which he might safely 
leave his name and his fame to future generations ; 
but those who have come after him, having taken 
his improvement as the basis of still farther improve- 
ments, have covered not only the Hudson, but all 
our navigable rivers, with flying palaces. And thus 
it is in every department : the man who accomplishes 
any thing great and good for his race, thereby 
furnishes a platform for the next generation to stand 
upon, to accomplish something greater and better; 
and though, in the progress of years, the immediate 
result of his efforts may be cast into the shade by 
the yet nobler exploits of other minds, it will still 
be true that they labour in his strength and he lives 
in their efforts. 

It may occur to you that the evidence of the 
position I am endeavouring to maintain, is rendered 
at least less impressive, if not absolutely dubious, 
by the fact that the current of intellectual influence 
sometimes seems to be arrested ; and those regions 
which were once the garden of learning and civiliza- 
tion, are invaded and trodden down by the rough 
foot of barbarism. The fact here alleged is indeed 
unquestionable. The intellectual history of the 
world is the record of alternate depression and 
3 



18 

triumph : not a nation has ever existed, but has 
furnished an example, in a greater or less degree, of 
such vicissitude. Greece, in the age of Pericles, 
acknowledged no rival, and feared none; but she 
has been sitting in sackcloth for ages, gazing at the 
scattered fragments of her former glory. Rome, in 
the age of Augustus, became, in her turn, the 
mistress of learning and eloquence and art; but 
after she had secured to herself an illuminated page 
in the world's history, she came down into the dust ; 
and when we inquire now for her great orators and 
historians and poets, she points us with downcast 
look to the tombs of Tully and Sallust and Virgil. 
The period of Leo the Tenth was a bright day for 
Italy, in respect to the triumph of the arts ; but after 
a generation or two, all her renown had become a 
matter of history. The highest literary glory of 
France is identified with the reign of Louis the 
Fourteenth; and that of England with the reign of 
Elizabeth ; and though, in each country, learning 
has ever since kept her fires burning, yet the genius 
of Hooker and Milton and Bacon, of Boileau and 
Moliere and Corneille, has hardly been reproduced. 
Thus the intellect of the world seems always to 
have been moving about: it has sometimes been 
concentrated within narrow limits, but it has always 
refused to be long stationary. 

I may remark, in passing, that this feature in the 



19 

history of intellect is quite analogous to the estab- 
lished economy of both the physical and the moral 
world. Creation itself is an example of endless 
variety; and much of both its beauty and utility 
depends upon this characteristic. The laws which 
regulate the operations of nature are uniform ; but 
not uniform in such a sense as to render human 
existence a perpetual monotony. God's moral ad- 
ministration is conducted upon fixed principles; 
and yet the developments in the .moral world have 
been various, according to the circumstances in 
which different nations have been placed. I say, 
therefore, if we were to take counsel of the establish- 
ed order of things, in other departments of the divine 
economy, we should be led to expect nothing else 
in regard to intellectual progress, than what we 
actually find ; — that, in some countries, the mind 
would be asleep, while, in others, it would be achiev- 
ing its most glorious triumphs. 

I shall not attempt here to investigate the partic- 
ular causes of either the rise or the decline of 
learning, in any period, or any country ; for these 
would be found so complex, and so interwoven with 
the general history of society, as to require not 
only a minuter analysis, but a wider range, than 
would consist with the limits which the occasion 
prescribes to me. But I may say that, as we lose 
nothing, on the whole, by that variety which marks 



20 

the constitution of nature, — as the lightning and 
tempest that scathe and blast, are Heaven's accred- 
ited ministers of benevolence to earth, so the alter- 
nations which we witness in the domain of intellect, 
are consistent with a substantial and enduring 
progress. Let superstition bury the mind in the 
night clouds of ignorance and error, — it may bear 
it for a while ; but, as sure as the mind is modelled 
after the perfections of God, it will ere long avenge 
itself of the wrongs it has suffered, by awaking to 
glorious impulses in defence of its own immortal 
rights. Superstition was the nurse of the Reformers. 
She first laid their intellects in her swaddling 
clothes; she administered antidotes to the legiti- 
mate workings of reason and truth ; in due time, 
she brought forth her chain, and sought to bind 
every faculty ; and, for a while, she doubted not 
but that her success was complete. Ere long, how- 
ever, she found herself in contact with certain giant 
spirits, — the very spirits whom she had herself 
trained, that had begun to dream of truth; and 
though she took to herself her whole armour, she 
found that they had a heavier armour still : when 
she reasoned, they confounded her; when she 
threatened, they defied her; when she flattered, 
they laughed her to scorn. It is true indeed that 
this was primarily a religious reformation ; but as 
the intellectual and the spiritual man had suffered 



21 

together, so also they enjoyed a united triumph. 
The effort to cast off that terrible incubus that had 
been pressing upon the mind of the world for ages, 
proved the opening of a new spring of intellectual 
life ; and it is not too much to say, that its quickening 
influence is felt, at this hour, among all the nations. 
There is another consideration that may possibly 
be thought to militate somewhat against the position 
I have undertaken to establish, — I refer to the fact 
that the finest models of eloquence, of poetry and 
of art, date back to a remote antiquity. In account- 
ing for this fact, in respect to poetry and eloquence 
at least, we are to remember that those great minds 
had a field which was comparatively unoccupied : 
the scenes which inspired Homer, were new to 
poetry ; and the occasions which roused Demos- 
thenes, had not become familiar to eloquence ; so 
that their conceptions were of course, in a great 
degree, original. And even the artist had the ad- 
vantage, to some extent, of occupying a new field; 
for the poverty of art, in its earliest stages, had left to 
the Greek masters nearly the whole of nature to copy, 
without their running any hazard of repetition. 
Besides, was it not worthy of a benignant Providence 
to allow here and there a master spirit to arise, who 
should not only irradiate his own country and age, 
but tower into a universal and perpetual model. 
But, however bright or enduring may be the lustre 



22 

of those stars of antiquity, we should remember 
that they were but solitary stars, or I should rather 
say solitary constellations, in the midst of wide- 
spread darkness. If there were a few minds that 
seemed to reach the highest point of elegance and 
of power, the mass were in bondage to the most 
degrading ignorance. Whereas now, knowledge 
has become almost as diffusive as the light ; and 
what is lacking in intensity, is made up a thousand 
fold in extension. We are warranted, therefore, in 
saying that intellectual influence has hitherto, on 
the whole, been progressive; and if the past sheds 
any light upon the future, we have a right to con- 
clude that it will be perpetual. 

It is a question of no small interest what consti- 
tutes the principle of self-preservation in the pro- 
ductions of the human mind ; — wherefore it is that 
of two lights that seem to burn with equal bright- 
ness, one burns on forever, and the other gradually 
dies away, till it reaches the point of absolute 
extinction. I suppose that the solution is to be 
found chiefly in the fact that in the one case there 
is, in the other there is not, a conformity to truth 
and nature, — to the established order of the crea- 
tion. The physical, the intellectual, the moral 
world, has each received its appropriate direction ; 
and God requires that man should respect his ordi- 
nance ; — should move in harmony with the laws 



23 

which He has impressed upon his own works ; and 
just in proportion as man loses sight of this requisi- 
tion, his labours will certainly be in vain. It is 
indeed quite possible that men may violate the 
established economy of the universe, and yet their 
productions may be the objects of a temporary 
admiration ; and they may even go into their graves, 
dreaming that they have acquired for themselves 
an immortal name ; but it will not be long before 
their works will follow them to the land of forget- 
fulness. Even genius herself, though she may leave 
her image impressed upon them ever so deeply, can 
procure for them but a brief respite ; for truth and 
nature must and will be vindicated, in their being 
given to the worm. 

Let me not be understood, however, to imply that 
every kind of departure from the actual reality of 
things as God has constituted them, necessarily 
infers a precarious or brief existence. A literary 
production or a work of art may have no prototype 
in nature, and yet it may faithfully exhibit some 
actual perversion of nature, which has helped es- 
sentially to form the character of an age. Homer 
has painted out many great events, which at least 
do not offend against probability ; and he has 
brought forth many fine representations of natural 
objects, which we know to be true ; and with all 
this he has intermingled an entirely fabulous celes- 



24 

tial economy ; and yet it was the commonly 
admitted economy of the time ; and thus, even 
here, his representations were conformed to fact, 
though not to nature. The economy itse]f, was 
false, and consequently perishahle; but the view 
which he has given of it is true,' — that is, is a fair 
record of the religious vagaries of his age ; and 
therefore, illuminated as it is by his matchless 
genius, it is immortal. The great works of Phidias 
and Praxiteles embodied the popular conceptions of 
their time ; and thus, to this day, have all the effect 
of historical monuments ; yet the characters or the 
events which they commemorate, have their origin 
chiefly in an absurd and ridiculous mythology. The 
pen of inspiration is alike faithful in describing the 
delusions of idolatry and the triumphs of Christi- 
anity, the suicide of Judas and the tranquil death 
scene of Stephen ; and the record is as enduring in 
the one case as in the other. 

If you look, for a moment, into the domain of art, 
and inquire what it is that chiefly distinguishes 
those productions which the world has long since 
pronounced immortal, you will find that it is this 
very quality of which I am speaking, — a conformity 
to the everlasting principles of truth, as they are 
manifested in the external world. The Parthenon 
and the Propylsea, the Collisaeum and the Pantheon, 
upon each of which barbarism had well nigh per- 



25 

formed its perfect work, — though belonging to 
different orders, are an embodiment of the highest 
principles of architectural taste : each is glorious in 
its ruins ; not because it is the product of immense 
thought and labour, but because its proportions, its 
ornaments, every thing pertaining to it, — has its basis 
in the economy of the creation. What is it that 
renders so irresistible to the eye Raphael's corona- 
tion of Charlemagne, or his deliverance of Peter 
from prison, or Michael Angelo's statues for the 
monument of Julius ? It is that nature is here so 
admirably imitated that you feel yourself to be in 
actual communion with her ; and the being who 
gazes at you from the canvas or the marble, is so 
entirely a thing of life, that you involuntarily walk 
reverently and talk softly in his presence. Such 
productions as these attract the universal eye ; and 
though it may take a connoisseur to find out all their 
beauties, or to feel their fall effect, yet the most 
unlettered peasant will view them with admiration, 
because they agree to an inward sense of fitness, 
founded on nature and truth, which he has never 
attempted to analyze. 

Need I say that it is this quality especially, that 
has given to Shakspeare his matchless attractions, 
as master of the drama. There have been other 
dramatic writers far more learned, in the technical 
sense, than he ; but none half so effective ; and the 



26 

reason is, that he carried the lamp directly into the 
heart's deepest recesses, while they have stood 
without and held it at a distance ; they have 
regarded chiefly what was rare, or factitious, or 
imaginary, while he conversed with every day 
realities, and was at once nature's docile pupil and 
faithful interpreter. There was nothing in the form 
of man from which he turned away. Man in the 
market place, man in the workshop, man in the 
prison, man even in the gutter, as well as man in 
the palace or on the throne, was a book for his 
perusal, a subject for his anatomy. Indeed he was 
shut up chiefly to original nature ; for with the 
exception of the characters of Chaucer, which 
took their hue chiefly from the poetry of the 
Troubadours, there was nothing in the English 
language, and very little that was accessible to him 
in any other, that furnished any tolerable illustration 
of human life. Hence there is scarcely a type of 
humanity, but some one or other of his characters 
resembles it. I know indeed that this great explorer 
of the heart, this master of the passions, is not 
without the most serious defects; and many a critic 
has ventured to assail him with his barbed arrows ; 
but they have availed about as little as did the 
arrows which the Parthians shot against the sun. 
Even the moral blemishes, the unpardonable offences 
against reverence and purity and virtue, with which 



27 

all are constrained to acknowledge that he is 
chargeable, are tolerated by a sort of common 
consent ; and the reason is, that they are inseparably 
interwoven with the texture of productions in which 
nature is so exactly copied, that the world will never 
consent to let them die. You have only to compare 
Shakspeare's Othello with Addison's Cato, to see 
how much superior Shakspeare was in the sim- 
plicity and truthfulness of nature, to the most 
successful aspirants to dramatic fame, that have 
succeeded him. 

Nor is this principle less strikingly illustrated in 
the department of philosophy. Aristotle, you know, 
was the great champion of dialectics in Greece; 
and the Peripatetic school which he established at 
Athens, was in existence as late as the time of 
Augustus. But Greece was but a single province 
of his dominion: he gradually brought under his 
sway almost the entire cultivated intellect of the 
world. He ruled at Rome in the time of the Caesars. 
He ruled in Arabia through the brightest periods of 
her history. He ruled for ages in the Christian 
church, as the presiding genius of every cell and 
convent which superstition had reared. In a word, 
the Jew and the Gentile, the Mohammedan and 
the Christian, bowed implicitly to his authority, 
and walked hand in hand in the light of his 
teachings. And Aristotle was truly a prince in the 



28 

world of intellect, — the greatest light, no doubt, of 
all antiquity. He was not merely a student but an 
originator : though he was furnished with a basis to 
work upon in the speculations of philosophers who 
had preceded him, especially of his own illustrious 
master, yet he may be said to have framed a new 
system ; — a system which had in it many precious 
materials that must endure always, but which, 
nevertheless, was not without its share of wocd, 
hay and stubble. With the schoolmen of the 
middle ages, it lost its native dignity, and became 
identified with an absurd and drivelling mysticism ; 
and, in this form, the world ere long grew weary of 
it, and Lord Bacon was the man to pronounce its 
doom. The bringing in of the doctrine of induction 
marked an epoch in the history of intellect ; and 
whether we consider its conformity to truth and 
reason, or the triumphs which it has already achieved, 
we cannot doubt that it is destined to endure and to 
become universal. Here and there indeed, in some 
creature of the mist, some dissector of the air, the 
spirit of the inglorious past is reproduced; and 
perhaps it lingers in some of the schools, as if 
sighing to regain its lost empire ; but the providence 
of God, in the progress of truth and knowledge, 
forbids all fear of its final triumph. The truth is, 
that the prototype of this latter system is in ideal or 
imaginary existences; while the prototype of the 



29 

former is in the very world of mind and matter 
which God has made ; and it were to be expected 
that God should honour those by rendering their 
labours perpetual, who honour Him by labouring in 
obedience to his laws. 

I find another apt illustration of my position in 
the history of religion ; for though I am speaking of 
intellectual influence, the intellect has its part to 
perform here as well as elsewhere ; and we may be 
allowed to speak here with the greater confidence, 
as the standard of truth and right is a matter of 
direct revelation. The germ of a perfect system of 
religion is coeval with the existence of the race. 
There are certain great fundamental truths, of which 
nature herself seems a divinely constituted teacher. 
But man has not been left to her teachings alone ; 
for during a period of four thousand years, there 
was a continued succession of divine revelations, 
which inspiration hath embodied in a permanent 
and infallible record; and in this record we have 
now a complete system of religious faith. But the 
disposition to mar this perfect system by spurious 
additions, has been manifest in every stage of its 
development. Even the Patriarchal dispensation 
witnessed to the setting up of idols, in place of the 
one only living and true God. During the Mosaic 
economy, a large part of the world, including the 
most cultivated nations, had buried the original 



30 

principles of natural religion under a mass of absurd 
notions, and foolish, indecent or cruel rites. And 
the false systems which thus grew up, have come 
down from age to age, — changing their character 
indeed, in many respects, but in regard to the funda- 
mental point of idol worship, remaining unchanged. 
Christianity came as the fulness of the blessing that 
had been in progress for ages ; and, for a while, she 
stood erect and beautiful, the very image of the 
Heavens. But it was not long before the spirit of 
the world seized her; and from being an angel of 
wisdom and love, she became the ally of supersti- 
tion, — even the minister of cruelty. In other words, 
the system which, for centuries, was received as 
Christianity, was quite another thing than the 
Christianity of the New Testament ; it was at best 
a miserable caricature of the glorious Gospel of the 
blessed God. But, in due time, there arose a set of 
men, who went earnesty, heroically to work, to 
separate the precious from the vile, and to restore to 
the church the pure system of truth, of which she 
had suffered herself to be robbed, or rather which 
she had voluntarily cast away. The labour which 
they commenced, it must be acknowledged, came 
to an ignoble pause with the generations that suc- 
ceeded them ; but it has revived in our day, and 
gives every promise of reaching, ere long, a glorious 
consummation. Nor is the Protestant church satis- 



31 

fied to extend her triumphs within the empire of 
nominal Christendom; but she is attacking, with 
yet greater zeal, the manifold forms of Pagan 
superstition; and she distinctly proclaims her pur- 
pose to keep at her work, till the last of them has 
become a despised and neglected thing. And I 
know that she will succeed in her enterprize. I 
know it, because I find sentence pronounced against 
every perversion of either natural or revealed re- 
ligion, by the infallible word of God ; but my faith 
in this divine testimony cannot but be confirmed, 
when I see how utterly all these human devices are 
at variance with man's own constitution; how they 
blight his noble faculties; how they belittle his 
immortal nature ; how they hang about him as 
incumbrances which reason and conscience are 
forever urging him to cast off. The voice of the 
past proclaims that nothing in religion but what 
really belongs to her, will live ; that while she will 
retain every element of truth and purity and power, 
she will shake herself more and more from whatever 
is earthly and adventitious, till she stands forth in 
all the simplicity and energy and majesty, which 
she brought with her from Heaven. 

If I am right as to what is necessary to give per- 
manency to intellectual efforts, then I am sure there 
is many a dreamer of immortality in our day, who 
has nothing better to expect than a brief and insig- 



32 

nincant existence. There are dreamers in philoso- 
phy, who cut loose from all established principles, 
and would palm upon us, in place of the sober 
deductions of reason, those absurd vagaries of the 
fancy, which even poetry would scarcely admit, 
without apologizing for an unaccustomed license. 
There are dreamers in politics, with whom the 
science of legislation degenerates into a mere tissue 
of blind abstractions; who seem to overlook the 
fact that communities are made up of individuals, 
and that government, in order to accomplish its 
legitimate end, must contemplate the workings of 
individual hearts ; or rather must regard the mass 
as having a common heart, corresponding to that 
which beats in every bosom. There are dreamers 
in respect to the means of social happiness ; who 
would merge individual rights and interests in the 
common weal ; who, under the pretence of magni- 
fying universal philanthropy, actually exemplify a 
spirit of universal selfishness. There are dreamers 
in theology, who would accumulate upon us, as 
objects of faith, matters which have not been re- 
vealed, or who would send the universe into mourn- 
ing for the loss of its God. There are dreamers in 
literature; — some really gifted minds, who had 
rather be found in a wrong track than a beaten 
track; who seem to love the darkness, because it 
renders more impressive their gorgeous creations ; 



33 

while there are others who try to hide the poverty 
of their conceptions in a mist; who throw out their 
common places with oracular assurance ; and who 
finally make you lose your temper by making you 
feel that, in the attempt to follow them, you have 
lost your labour. Now, I venture to say that all 
these offenders against truth and nature, will have 
their reward ; and it will be of such short duration, 
that it would not be strange if they should live to 
enjoy it all. They may bequeath their productions 
to posterity,' — •no matter how solemnly, — posterity 
will indignantly reject them ; she will say that it is 
enough and more than enough, that they have ex- 
ercised a momentary sway over their own genera- 
tion. Or if they should chance to maintain their 
ephemeral dominion, even through several genera- 
tions, it will be only the difference between a 
sudden and a lingering death. I would not ask to 
have it certified to me by any prophet, that some 
who pride themselves as among the brightest stars 
of the present age, will, within less than a century, 
have run their short lived course, and utterly dis- 
appeared from the world's intellectual horizon. 

But notwithstanding nothing that is not conform- 
ed to truth and right can endure as a permanent 
element of human life or human society, it is not 
safe to leave the good to work its own way, and the 
evil to die out of itself; for though there is that in 
5 



34 

the very constitution of things, which ensures the 
result of which I have spoken, that result is never 
realized, independently of the instrumentality of 
cultivated and virtuous minds. You see then that, 
in this arrangement of Providence, there is devolved 
upon you a mighty responsibility. You stand as 
legatees in respect to tire past; as guardians in 
respect to the future. These religious, civil and 
literary institutions, the laws that govern us and 
the liberty in which we rejoice, the achievements 
of learning and science, and the precious records of 
our common faith, we receive as an inheritance ; — 
as an embodiment of the intellect and the heart of 
many generations. Believe me, you have much to 
do in order to fulfil the great purpose of Heaven, 
in committing this deposite to your hands. It is 
not enough that you do nothing to mar or diminish; 
you are to do much to increase and strengthen and 
adorn. You are not merely to enjoy the labours of 
other generations; you are to carry forward what 
they have begun, and to leave a richer legacy to 
the future than you have received from the past. 
You are to take heed, especially, that your intel- 
lectual efforts are all directed to honourable ends, and 
controlled by virtuous dispositions. If mistakes 
and errors have come down to you, — no matter 
though they be hoary with age, and consecrated by 
the prejudices of many generations, you are to do 






35 

what you can to correct them, so that they shall 
not survive as a burden or a curse to another gener- 
ation. But while you are ready to lend a helping 
hand to every work of real reform, you are to bring 
the claims of every object that invokes your sympa- 
thy or your aid, to the light; for there are dreamers 
and madmen abroad, who claim to be the world's 
chief reformers. If there are influences at work for 
evil among your contemporaries, you are bound to 
put forth, according to the measure of your ability, 
an antagonist influence. You are to cherish our 
noble institutions with grateful and reverential care, 
regarding each of them as a light shining for the 
benefit of the world. In a word, you are to show 
yourselves at once the patrons and the examples of 
intellectual excellence ; and the great cause of hu- 
manity will scarcely ask any other pledge that her 
interests shall be protected and improved in your 
hands. 

Does not the glance which we have now taken 
at the general progress of society, including its 
alternate struggles and triumphs, justify glorious 
expectations in regard to the future? With the 
men of this generation is lodged the aggregate 
influence of nearly sixty centuries ; — an influence 
which originated with the parents of the race, and 
which has been flowing onward, often indeed in an 
irregular, and sometimes a concealed, channel, but, 



36 

on the whole, gradually increasing to the present 
hour. Now we may safely say that here is a great 
system in operation, under the direction of Provi- 
dence, which must work out intellectual and moral 
results that have yet been scarcely shadowed forth 
even to our imaginations ; and yet we shall form no 
adequate estimate of the case, unless we take into 
view the increased power of the present age above 
any of the ages that have preceded it. Is there any 
thing yet discovered in the universe of matter or of 
mind, that is not put in requisition in aid of the 
cause of human improvement ? Is there not an all 
pervading spirit of wakeful curiosity, of unyielding 
research, that is actually forcing nature to give up 
her secrets, and is rapidly exhuming a long buried 
antiquity ? Is not commerce rising constantly into 
a more powerful auxiliary of knowledge ; uttering, 
in the dark places of the earth, her authoritative 
mandate, — 'Let there be light,' — and gradually 
bringing the whole world into a common neighbour- 
hood ? Have not the land and the water bowed 
alike to the dominion of steam, so that distance has 
become almost an unmeaning word, even when it 
includes the opposite poles ? Above all, has not the 
electro-magnetic principle opened a channel of 
thought which rivals in velocity the thought which 
it conveys? And is not the church, in her con- 
stantly extending missionary operations, carrying 



37 

forward the work of intellectual as well as moral 
regeneration; for she cannot prosecute the latter, if 
the former be entirely neglected ; and the same 
spirit of benevolence that prompts to the one, 
prompts to the other also. Now I ask whether, 
with that ever accumulating tide of influence which 
has been rolled down upon us through successive 
generations, and which is receiving such vast 
contributions in our day, from newly discovered or 
newly applied agents, there be any thing wanting 
to satisfy the most incredulous, that the reign of 
useful knowledge, of well furnished and well 
employed intellect, is destined to be universal. I 
see no dark cloud, no baleful star, in our horizon, 
to portend either the approach of a wild storm of 
barbarism, or the return of a still night of ignorance. 
But even if I knew that learning were to suffer 
another dire eclipse, I would fix my eye upon the 
past, and thank God and take courage. I would 
call to mind those by-gone ages, in which the 
intellect of the world seemed to have undergone a 
paralysis; and yet, in due time, it awoke with 
renovated power, and to gigantic efforts, according 
to the years in which it had seen evil. I would not 
allow myself to doubt that that benignant Provi- 
dence which was the guardian of learning when 
she was shut up for centuries in monasteries and 
libraries, and which finally brought her forth with 



38 

a relumed and joyous aspect, would still throw 
around her his protecting wing; and that, in 
company with her angel sister, — virtue, she would 
ere long look down upon the whole world and call 
it her own. 

Who can estimate the importance of a great and 
cultivated and well directed mind ? If we limit 
our views to the present, the visible, the palpable, 
we are sometimes amazed at the amount of power 
which a single individual, in the course of a brief 
life, puts forth. He may be at the head of an army, 
and decide by his skill and prowess his country's 
destiny. He may be at the helm of state, and carry 
the vessel safe through the rockings of the wildest 
tempest. He may have discovered some principle 
in nature, or achieved some triumph in art, which 
gives society a fresh impulse and wakes thousands 
of minds to more vigorous action. He may be a 
reformer in morals or a star in literature, an oracle 
of taste or a fountain of wisdom ; so that, before he 
yet speaks, the world begin to listen ; and when he 
writes, they are on the alert to read. It were not 
easy to say how many or how great are the purposes 
of public and private utility, which such an indi- 
vidual accomplishes for his own generation ; his 
influence works its way through innumerable chan- 
nels, — I had almost said, becomes an ingredient of 
the very atmosphere you breathe. Now, I say, if 



we were to consider the earthly life of such a man 
as terminated when the mechanism of the body 
stops, it would still have been a glorious thing for 
him to live ; but the truth is that his intellect, his 
heart, all the elements of his power, are embalmed 
in his achievements ; and here is a life that flour- 
ishes, in spite of the desolations of the tomb. Nor 
does he continue stationary at this new stage of his 
sublunary being, but moves down the track of ages 
with an ever increasing energy and velocity, and 
with an ever extending and ever brightening do- 
main. When I think of an illustrious mind thus 
perpetuating itself on earth, and becoming more 
fresh and powerful with the progress of centuries, I 
cannot but bow down in reverence before my own 
nature; for notwithstanding the blighting malady 
that has overtaken it, I recognize in it the miniature 
of at least some of the attributes of God; I see in 
it a power of thought and feeling and action, to the 
development of which my imagination cannot fix a 
limit ; and I am lost, absolutely lost, in the grandeur 
of this conception, as my mind stretches forward to 
grasp the idea of its own immortality. 

If I were to select from the whole intellectual 
nobility of the present day one whose influence, 
especially as a statesman, furnishes as apt an illus- 
tration of my subject as any other, I should have 
no occasion to look beyond New England ; arid the 



40 

name to which I refer, has already become so much 
the property of history, that delicacy does not forbid 
me to allude to it ; while yet it is so much a house- 
hold word, that necessity hardly requires that I 
should pronounce it. That illustrious man, nearly 
half a century ago, was hard at work at a neigh- 
bouring college in the cultivation of his intellect ; 
and he has been hard at work, almost ever since, for 
the welfare of his country. I speak not of the dis- 
tinctive hue of his political opinions, or of any par- 
ticular position he may at any time have assumed ; 
but overlooking all party distinctions, I speak of 
him as an earnest, honest, far-seeing patriot; a man 
of wisdom and a man of might; great as truly in 
repose as in action; in thoughtful moderation as in 
resistless power. I honour him as fit to be a balance 
wheel in our political mechanism, which shall give 
to each and every part of it, a steady, safe and 
effective operation. I honour him as one who has 
more than once shown himself able to stand up in 
serene grandeur amidst warring elements, and to 
make his voice heard above the loudest swell of 
the storm, declaring for his country, his whole 
country, forever. I honour him as one who has 
given additional value to the privilege of being 
an American, and whose name we have only to 
speak, to rebut many of the paltry calumnies of 
other nations. There have been periods in our 



41 

history, when all parties have united in a tribute of 
homage to his public character ; and even when he 
has appeared on the arena of political conflict, and 
mingled in the hottest of the fight, he has never 
stood in so much as an equivocal attitude, in respect 
to either dignity or integrity ; and his very adver- 
saries have felt constrained to do him honour. His 
vocation has been that of a statesman ; and there 
his influence and his honours have chiefly centered ; 
and yet he has occasionally brought an offering to 
the cause of literature, which has given him a place 
among her most renowned benefactors. The pro- 
ductions of his pen, distinguished alike by chaste 
simplicity and rugged strength, may fairly challenge 
comparison with the most classic productions of 
antiquity. His thoughts are like a chain of dia- 
monds, and his style like a crystal stream. Even 
Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill have been invested 
with new attractions by the power of his eloquence ; 
and as long as the one stands a witness for religious 
freedom, and the other a witness for civil freedom, 
each will be a witness also to the majesty of his 
intellect. Yes, he will live on through all coming- 
time ; will live a continually brighter and stronger 
and more widely diffused life. And if the state 
where he was born and nurtured, or the state in 
which most of his public life has been passed, should 
venture an attempt to monoplize his fame, or here- 



42 

after to build his monument, his country would cry 
out that he belonged to her ; the world would cry 
out that he belonged to her; and these universal 
claims would be echoed and re-echoed by each 
passing generation. 

If the influence of a single eminent individual be 
thus diffusive and powerful, what shall be said of 
the influence of an institution that is designed to 
educate the youth of successive generations; to 
supply to society the elements of an enduring 
progress by regularly furnishing recruits to the 
ranks of intelligence and virtue ? Or to make the 
case a definite one, who can estimate the import- 
ance of this very institution, in its bearings, not 
upon your own state only, but upon the nation and 
the world ? It came into being less than half a 
century ago, while you were yet only a province. 
It seemed, in its rising, a sort of morning star, 
heralding the day of your independent existence ; 
but you hail it now as one of the greater intellectual 
orbs, whose beams reach farther and grow brighter, 
as it advances towards mid-heaven. Large portions 
of your territory which were wilderness then, have 
since become the marts of industry and the haunts 
of busy men. And while your population has been 
increasing and extending on every side, your inter- 
nal resources have been in a constant process of 
development; you have been going forward in 



43 

whatever involves the great interests of civilization 
and humanity; the desert places of ignorance have 
put on the joyous aspect of intelligence and activity ; 
and you would not fear now to be weighed against 
some of the older states, in respect to social 
and civil importance. But whence this wonderful 
improvement, — this keeping pace of the intellectual, 
and I trust the moral, with the physical ; — this 
rising up of an educated, influential state out of the 
wilderness of the last century ? Whatever other 
causes may have operated, here in this well endowed 
and well ordered institution, I doubt not, is the 
most important cause of all. Your great men are 
not of foreign importation ; they are born and nur- 
tured among yourselves; they come hither and 
learn the use of their own powers, and then they go 
abroad and become your epistle known and read 
every where ; and some of them utter words of 
wisdom and power from the highest places in the 
nation. And the present is but the pledge, the em- 
bryo, the obscure shadowing forth of the glorious 
future. God forbid that any thing should occur 
even to render dubious the splendid vision that rises 
before you ! When this nation of ours, having 
redressed all the wrongs she has committed, and 
survived all the dangers and conflicts incident to 
her onward course, shall sit down to share a serene 
triumph with the family of nations ; when the 



44 

golden age, not of the poets but of the prophets, 
shall spread its mild radiance over the world ; who 
of you will undertake to fix a limit to the influence 
which this institution will have exerted in bringing 
forward that bright and welcome epoch ? Who 
will do justice to the gratitude and veneration with 
which the names of its patrons and benefactors will 
then be pronounced 1 Will not multitudes eagerly 
inquire where rest the remains of its illustrious 
founder, that they may bring fresh garlands to lay 
upon his grave ? 



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